Friday, March 28, 2008

A middle school student in Phoenix realized that he had brought a pocket knife to school in his backpack. Knives are specifically prohibited in school.

Said student tells a teacher about his mistake.

His reward?

A five day suspension.

The school's reasoning: they have a zero tolerance policy.

So what did they teach the student? Honesty invokes punishment, and if he had just kept his mouth shut and not mentioned his error, he would have escaped unscathed. Nice lesson.

When are we going to realize that zero tolerance policies are crutches that are used by milquetoast school administrators who lack the necessary IQ points required to evaluate a situation and make a reasoned decision.

2 comments:

Here is a link to an article on my blog about this topic: http://weblog.xanga.com/hbasedmomof6/632886330/lions--tigers--steak-knives-oh-no.html

You are definitely right that for school administrators "zero tolerance" is just easier than using some discernment skills! They should have zero tolerance for things like teaching to the test, bullying, name calling, teasing, etc.